I really hoped the weather cleared up before long. It was starting to feel like we did nothing except sit round the table. The island wasn’t exactly pretty, but it would still be good to get out and have some fresh air. It didn’t look as if that was going to happen any time soon, though. We’d barely sat down before lightning lit up the room. The thunder arrived seconds later, crashing so loudly that the windows rattled in their frames, and Charlie whimpered.

“It’s a good thing the tower is locked,” Kate said. “We wouldn’t want to be up there in this weather. Lighthouses are often hit by lightning because of how tall they are.”

I’d had no idea this was the case, but decided to make sure Rosie stayed away for the rest of the day. After lunch, I persuaded her to play a board game with Charlie and me. He’d been badgering us to join him all morning because the game required four players. I was surprised that he seemed to have gone weirdly quiet now and hardly spoke a word to either of us all through the game. He kept fiddling with a playing piece and glancing fearfully at the shuttered 133windows, flinching every time there was a new bolt of lightning. Everything about him seemed different from usual – smaller, and thinner, like he’d shrunk in on himself. A few seconds later, he rushed from the room without saying anything.

“Sorry, girls,” Kate said, glancing over. “Please don’t take it personally. I’m amazed he played a game with you at all. He’s painfully shy right now.”

She’d said that before but usually it seemed like Charlie was the opposite of shy. I’d certainly learned more snail facts over the last couple of days than I’d ever really wanted to know. And when I passed him on the stairs a short while later, he said, “Hi, Jess! Isn’t the storm cool? It sounds like there’s a monster trying to get in! Roar!”

I couldn’t work him out at all, but then I really didn’t know much about kids. Maybe sudden mood swings like this were common for a six-year-old?

I was heading to our bedroom when I noticed a piece of paper lying outside the door. I could see the bright flash of crayons and realized it was another one of Charlie’s drawings. I bent to pick it up, thinking it would be more figures holding hands, but this was a different type of picture altogether. Charlie 134had had to use a lot of red crayon because of all the blood splattered across the page.